San Francisco Bound...

Brackley Travel Blog

Bags packed and already to go, I got up at 06.30 ( a lie in compared to a work day :) ), left the house at 07.45 and drove out for Heathrow. I was prepared for a long and frustrating drive down with crazy rush hour traffic, but some how I avoided it all and made it to Heathrow in an hour. Checking in, I made my way through to the departure gate; got my netbook out and started surfing the web, posted a comment on TB and booked my next holiday to Africa in September (ops)!

The flight was shorter than expected and pretty enjoyable, I'd made sure I checked in online and so chose a seat with plenty of leg room. I tried to sleep for a good portion of the flight to help adjust to the 8 hour time difference; I was actually pretty successfull so only had time to watch one film; The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - quite good but certainly and odd film, I felt that the writers hadn't quite known how to end it properly and so the ending was a bit weak.

Arriving in SFO I got off the plane rapidly and tried to make sure I go to Immigration quickly to avoid a big queue, just as well because another 747 came in just behind us and the resulting queue was huuuuuuuuge! I got to the boarder guard and was pleasantly suprised he was a nice guy and we had a chat about my job, much nicer than my experiences in JFK. I managed to grab my bags promptly, found the BART and jumped on the train into the city; I was running late as I'd said I'd meet Mark at 16.30 by his hostel.

Getting off at Powell station I wondered around for a few minutes searching for my Hostel and eventually found it, checked in, changed and headed out onto the streets to find Mark and who ever else was coming out in North Beach. The walk up was nice and I got to see China Town, and a bit of North Beach. Mark appeared out of hostel and we headed out to O'Reilly's where we'd said we'd be until 19.00, we chatted and looked out for anyone else from TB, not finding anyone we headed off to the Stinking Rose for dinner. WOW! The smell of garlic really hits you when you walk in, it was at this point Mark told me he doesn't really like garlic ... DOH!

After dinner, which was really nice, we headed out and not knowing where to go and not having seen anyother TBs we walked down to Union Square and found Lefty O'Douls which looked like a nice enough bar. A while later and after a few texts back and forth Adrian and Robert walked in. Cool, 4 of us complete strangers having drinks and a night out together. Come midnight, a couple of drinks, a pizza and a LOT of laughs I was dead on my feet and headed to bed having been up for roughly 26 hours.